Winter 2016 Anime Closing Reviews

Now six weeks gone, the Winter anime season is far behind us. However I think now is a good time to go over all the shows I finished and give my thoughts after they have had time to sit with me. A lot of my initial views have changed after seeing which shows stuck and which ones I still think about. So here are my views on everything I checked out and finished last season.

HaruChika

• Forgettable. HaruChika is a mismash of many genres, it’s like a school band anime with mystery as well. I thought the chemistry between the two leads Haruta and Chika was great, it’s one of the only times you’ll see a male and female duo with no sexual tension (because Haruta is gay). Each episode would focus on a different club member and some kind of problem they had which sometimes left to some mystery to be solved. Most of the time Haruta solved it on his own, the best episodes where when Chika had something useful to do. The music element isn’t touched on enough, this is no Hibike Euphonium. The anime did bring up interesting topics like Vietnam vets and Chinese Americans…strange for anime topics. It was decently enjoyable but had a lot of shortcomings.

6/10

Phantom World

• This show was pretty silly. I feel Kyoto Ani stopped caring after episode 1. It’s about a group of high school kids who fight phantoms. But the plot doesn’t matter because there really was none until the last 2 episodes. I didn’t mind the lack of plot and there where a couple of pretty good episodes but overall it was mediocre. The cast was not awful, Reina was really good, and it was fun to see how little care was going into the show. It looked alright but compared to some other Kyoto Ani shows it was underwhelming. There where good designs like the cute witch girl and Enigma who’s an even sexier version of Rikka Takanshi’s big sister. Fun ride but overall meh.

6/10

Pandora In The Crimson Shell 

• Ghost In The Shell + Excel Saga = meh. This is the love…er…friendship story of android girl Nene and robot girl Clarion. In this show Nene fingers Clarion’s robotic vag to get powers. That is as far as this show gets for absurd content, the rest of it is mediocre. I didn’t find this show to be all that funny or interesting. The last two episodes where decent but overall I didn’t think much of it. It was ultimately about the relationship between Nene and Clarion, which also wasn’t much of a pull, but atleast it had pretty colours.

6/10

Girls Beyond The Wasteland

• A story of a club of high school kids making a visual novel. So like Saekano, but not quite. This show was a low quality production but I didn’t think it did anything too bad. It was fun to see the cast build this visual novel but it felt dry. It just did the things it was meant to do, told the story, and ended. I don’t think this show had anything special going on and the animation was pretty poor. The characters where not the most exciting but the main girl Kuroda got some good development and the plot twist near the end was also unexpected. Not bad but also not much.

6.5/10

Dagashi Kashi

• I think I’m going to type a full on review for this and a reflection piece on tricking yourself into liking something…Dagashi is the tale of a kid who lives at his Dad’s candy shop. One day a crazy candy obsessed girl shows up, Hotaru, and tries to get Coconut’s Dad to join her Father’s company. But to do that Coconut’s has to agree to take over the candy shop which he doesn’t want to do. That’s the set-up and after episode 1 it’s forgotten. It’s a light summer feel comedy show and I wanted to love this show and rate it highly because I really liked how episode 1 set-up, but it lost steam along the way and the rapid fire jokes turned into long boring unfunny scenes. It lost a lot of momentum. There was a lot of pretty funny jokes here and there but overall I found it to be forgettable. It was nice to see the different kinds of candy and some jokes where spot on but it lost a lot and by the end it felt completely out of gas. I set myself up for disappointment with this one.

6.5/10

ERASED

• The biggest and hypest show of the season, I don’t fell the need to give a summary here. ERASED was an exciting thrill ride and for the majority of the show I was liking it a lot. It was pretty exciting and overall a great journey however by the end it started to go way too fast and resulted in something not quite satisfying. The last 2 episodes where not very good. The killer was obvious and we where meant to know that, it was not “who did it” but rather “how will Satoru stop them”. I think the final conflict was super underwhelming though, it went into that “The Joker needs Batman” type thing. The last 2 episodes where too fast. But the journey was good and when it ended I went “that was a good ride”. Best OP of the season, Asian Kung-Fu Generation’s “Re:Re” is an older song but this new recording was so awesome and far superior to the original version.

7/10

KonoSuba

• Sitting on top the pile is KonoSuba, a really great comedy that remained great it’s whole run. The set-up seems cliche, otaku gamer being stuck in a game world, however right away this show proves to be different. KonoSuba is a really funny show that managed to also set up an interesting fantasy world with lots of detail, it’s not just a pure parody! It’s jokes nearly almost hit and it had great comedic timing. The humor evolved and instead of harping on the some jokes it found new dimensions and elements of it’s character to pick on. Darkness is a masochist knight who lets everything hurt her, but that gets toned down and climaxes with the hilarious bath scene. This part plays off her desire to be humiliated and introduces a new element to the jokes of her being a masochist beyond ‘she likes pain and insults”. Because the jokes aren’t repeated, each episode feels fresh and overall it ends up being just a really good comedy about a group of idiots stuck in a game land. This show is so good season 2 was announced in the last episode. Also I love how Aqua didn’t wear underwear and no one said a word about it.

8/10

Overall

The winter season was a fun time for me even if most of the shows didn’t end the best. KonoSuba was really the only show I watched which stayed great the whole run. But ERASED was a fun thrill ride most of it’s run and the other shows also gave me decent enjoyment. I feel this Spring is already better and this summer is also looking good.